Dear Diary,

I think my last post did a good job of expressing how I'm feeling about the universe at this particular moment, but I thought I should point out that I also upped my dose of anti-depressants two days ago in response to the overwhelming feeling of dread that has seeped into every interaction I've had with the world lately. When messing with the dosage of an anti-depressant, it should be noted, it can actually temporarily make you feel more depressed - even if what you've done is increase the dose. It seems like a strange thing to happen, but it's not that odd when you understand the way the drugs work.

But this isn't a lecture about drugs.

It's just a few thoughts that I had while trying to take my mind off of my own life this week by watching a movie.

The movie was Troy - a modified and extremely abridged version of The Iliad.

The Iliad, as you probably don't know since you're just a diary, was an epic poem written by Homer a long time ago. Like, more than a hundred years ago. Before TV was invented. Before file sharing got the record companies' knickers in a bunch.

Way before that. We're talking ancient Greece. The period and place where, unlike our society, it was a regular practice for a grown man to take a twelve year old boy (or thereabouts) as his own personal sexual partner. Bit odd if you ask me, but that's how it was done. Very different time. (The boy would, by the way, grow to adulthood and eventually take his own boy as a partner - it was a tradition that went on and on and on...)

That's not why I'm writing this, though. That was just a factoid meant to move you into a state of shock. I think it's good to get a little history in every now and then, and especially when that history depicts practices which were so very different from our own. It's like drinking twelve cups of coffee with your eyeballs and brain in a very short period of time. A little wake-me-up in the early morning or late afternoon.

I'm writing this because, unlike The Iliad, which I think was written to lull the twelve year old boys to sleep so that all the Michael Jacksons of ancient Greece could have their "sleep-overs," I found the movie Troy to be a fine retelling of the myth of the wars started over Helen - originally of Sparta, but later of Troy, after Paris, son of Priam, stole her away in the hold of a ship captained by his brother, Hector, hero of the Trojans for his prowess on the battlefield.

Troy allowed me to see the story itself - the characters and their relationships - without such brain-numbing passages as the catalogue of the ships bound for Ilium. The kind of exposition demonstrated in Homer's work would never be allowed in this century. The Iliad, like other epic poems of the time, was passed down through a tradition of oral storytelling. It wouldn't have been so boring, given that ancient Greek had a tonal aspect that gave the poems a singsong quality, but if someone, now, were to attempt to recite the catalogue of ships to me in full, I'd probably try to shoot him in the face with whatever was handy. Since I don't own a gun, that means I'd probably try to shoot him in the face with a tripod or a fine male perfume or french-fries or something, but I'd still try. I wouldn't give up. It's about the principle of the thing.

Overall, though, I love the story. That one lovestruck man, Paris, was willing to send his entire country to war over his newfound love for Helen, a foreign hottie who set fire to his loins. This is the sort of thing over which wars ought to be fought. All this crap about land and weapons and oil and all that is lame in comparison.

But at the same time, if I were a Trojan civilian, living out my peaceful days behind the high walls guarding my city, I'd be pretty pissed off if one of the sons of Priam decided to send my country to war because he wanted to get it on with a woman already betrothed to the brother of Agamemnon, a king with whom Troy had an uneasy relationship.

The result was, to wrap it up in a couple words, a mess.

A thousand ships sent to another country to take a city for one woman. Then a thousand ships met with an army willing to duke it out for nearly a decade, defending the initial theft of that one woman.

Princes and heroes dying. Kings murdered. Bajillions of ordinary soldiers mowed down, widowing their wives and leaving children behind.

All for a woman.

If you haven't watched Troy yet, then I highly recommend you do so. If you've ever gotten the feeling that you've made a mistake in life - like spilling coffee on your laptop at work or something - then it's always nice to know that somewhere, at some other time, even if it was just a myth, someone else screwed up in a much larger way than you could possibly dream, and that countless lives were lost or destroyed because one selfish little son of a king thought that all the gore was worth getting the chance to "do it" with Helen.

It made me feel better, anyway.

Also, I liked the outfits.